Creator of Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and beautiful code. I created Rails in 2003 by extracting it from Basecamp and continue to lead the development.

Hundreds of thousands of programmers around the world have built amazing applications using Rails. Some of the more famous include Github, Shopify, Airbnb, Square, and Highrise.

Founder & CTO at Basecamp

Basecamp is the saner, organized way to manage projects and communicate company-wide. It's software as a service and we've been around for more than a decade. I run the company together with my business partner, Jason Fried, and our lovely team of some fifty programmers, designers, supporters, and sysops.

We've released an all-new version 3 just last year that we're mighty excited about. Give it a look.

Best-selling author

REWORK is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Sunday Times best seller with more than half a million copies sold around the world. It's a book about starting and running businesses a better way.

REMOTE: Office Not Required encapsulates all I've learned about working remotely for the past decade. It includes all the arguments for why the time is right for remote work to blossom, and for how you can navigate the pitfalls. It's in the same style as REWORK: Short, wonderfully illustrated, and to the point.

Finally, I've authored a couple of #1 Medium posts that you might also like: RECONSIDER, about the Unicorn-hysteria in the startup world, and The day I became a millionaire, about, well, becoming a millionaire!

Le Mans & WEC class-winning racing driver

I've been racing in the FIA World Endurance Championship for the past six years. In 2014, I won my class in the 82nd running of the 24 hours of Le Mans – the world's biggest endurance race. We also won the championship in the GTE-Am category that year. What a 2014 season!

This was with the wonderful Aston Martin Racing (Young Driver) team in our #95 Vantage V8 GTE-AM car, also known as "The Dane Train" (due to our all Danish driver line-up) together with drivers Kristian Poulsen and Nicki Thiim and team owner Jan Struve.

During my time in the FIA WEC, I've started 45 races, finished on the podium 20 times, won 6 races, finished runner-up in the championship twice, and won the championship once. At Le Mans, I've competed six times, finished six times, been on the podium four times, and won once.

Public speaker

I occasionally give talks on business and technology. One of the more popular talks I've given is The Secret To Making Money Online, delivered at Startup School in 2008. It's about how you don't need to aim to be a billionaire or take lots of venture capital to have a successful startup (and life):

Along the same lines, I debated Jason Calcanis from This Week in Startups on business models, bubbles, capitalism, quality of life, market share vs. profit share, running a business vs. selling a business, and a variety of other related topics (fast-forward 47 minutes):